of the parts in order to put together and hold firmly the new plan so as to judge of the effect of it before taking any measures to realize it. There is a great economy in the possession of such a power. A mind naturally pictorial, or disposed to retain visual images in general, and an education in the particular subject operated upon, are requisite for success in such an operation. The susceptibility to beauty, or to the emotional effects of the several combinations, acts in favour of every construction that yields the emotion, rendering it possible to put together those and separate others with far less difficulty. A person of sensitive taste can readily break up in idea a distasteful combination, and form a new one calculated to satisfy the craving for beauty; while the same person might be totally incapable of breaking up a tasteful conjunction to compose a new arrangement devoid of this quality, and ministering solely to some end of practical utility or scientific truth.

CONSTRUCTION OF NEW EMOTIONS.

10. We may revive emotional states by contiguity or similarity, or by a composition of associating bonds; and from two or more states thus revived new emotions may be generated by the working of the principle now under discussion. I have already touched upon this in speaking of the organic sensations, these being almost purely emotional in their character. But if we pass to the feelings that are more recoverable and more retainable in the ideal form, we shall be in a better position for elucidating the peculiar features of the case.

The problem is to realize emotions such as we have never experienced in ourselves, or have experienced too rarely to recal them by any effort of mere recollection. The feelings belonging to men whose character, position, occupation, &c., are totally different from our own, can in general be conceived only through a constructive process, operating upon feelings that we do possess.

There are certain elementary emotions that belong to human nature in general, although manifested very unequally in consequence both of primitive differences of character, and

THE ELEMENTARY EMOTIONS MUST BE EXPERIENCED. 585

of variety in the outward circumstances of individuals. Every one has experience of love and hate, of property and pride, of feeling beauty and bestowing admiration. Should any one of the elementary feelings be absent from a character, no constructive process is sufficient to create it; for what constructiveness can produce is by that very fact not elementary. If, for example, a person were naturally devoid of the emotion of fear, this emotion could not be generated by any effort of composition that I am acquainted with. In like manner the irascible feeling seems so distinct and peculiar that we could not be made to conceive it without direct experience. When any emotion not entirely wanting is yet allowed to sleep in the character, the difficulty of rousing it may prove insuperable; thus it is that some men are unable to enter into the sentiment of religious veneration, and others are unable to comprehend the pleasures of the fine arts; one class are utterly incapable of sympathising with the pursuit of scientific truth, and another can never be made to understand the feeling of disinterested usefulness.

The emotions that can be acquired by constructiveness are, therefore, the compound emotions, or some conceivable varieties of the elementary. We must be able in each case to specify certain primary feelings possessed by the person whom we address, the combination of which in a particular way shall yield the emotion that we desire to communicate or evoke. If the constituent elements are actually made present to the mind in their proper degree, the fusion will take place as a matter of course. Perhaps the best commencing exercise in this art of conceiving other men's feelings would be to change the degree of one of our own emotions. I have a certain disposition to take on fear; it being, however, apparent that another person, whose character I am desirous of realizing, is susceptible to a much greater extent, I must endeavour to assume for a time a pitch of terror much beyond my own. This can be done in various ways. I may go back upon times of my life when the emotion took a greater hold of me; I may conceive occasions and circumstances of a kind to produce a more than ordinary degree of the state; or I may revert to

the particular subject that most easily depresses my courage. By these means I can be made to assume an unwonted amount of the feeling, and can come to approach the state of mind of the person supposed, so as to comprehend the actions flowing from that particular state.

By some such efforts one might acquire an exalted cast of any familiar emotion. The exercise would cost both effort and time, but if we are able to revive with ease the past states of our own experience that bear on the case, we shall not be long in accomplishing the end in view. To acquire a new degree of intensity of any emotion so thoroughly as to be able to follow out all the influences and consequences of the feeling is a very high effort and demands iteration and time; inasmuch as there is implied in it the process of fixing into a permanent possession a state of mind that has been worked up with labour. Thus for the man that is only alive in a moderate degree to the pleasure of music to be able at any time to rise to the state of an enthusiast so as to depict that character in all its phases, there would be required a somewhat laborious training. Writers whose province it is to trace out and depict all the windings of character different from their own, must work themselves into a number of un-experienced degrees and modes of feeling, as a preparation for their task.

II. The exercise of combining two emotions, so as to bring out a third different from either, is not intrinsically arduous. Everything depends upon the facility of assuming the elementary feelings. Supposing a person inexperienced in the sentiment of property in land, but perfectly able to recal the feeling of property in other things and to conceive the emotions connected with land in men's minds generally, a fusion of the two states would make some approximation to the proprietorial feeling. If a person has ever known an affection of the nature of a passion for any one object, such a one is capable of conceiving, by an effort of transference, a passion for an object very different. Thus it is that Michelet in endeavouring to portray the attachment of the French peasant proprietor for his land, brings into the picture the feelings of strong personal attachment. The difference of subject is great, but the

RECOVERING EXTINCT MODES OF FEELING.

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attempt is not therefore hopeless. It would doubtless be much easier to transfer the feelings of love in one personal relation to some other relation by making allowance for the difference, as to pass from friendship to marriage, or to the parental relation.

The historian, who has to deal with extinct modes of feeling, and who has to study truth in his delineations, is necessarily much versed in the exercise now under discussion. Mr. Grote forewarns his reader' that there will occur numerous circumstances in the after political life of the Greeks which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into the course of their legendary associations. He will not understand the frantic terror of the Athenian public during the Peloponnesian war, on the occasion of the mutilation of the statues called Hermæ, unless he enters into the way in which they connected their stability and security with the domiciliation of the gods in the soil.'-Hist. of Greece, Preface, p. 17.

Any man requiring to deal with his fellow beings practically needs this power of accurately conceiving and appreciating their feelings. An artist, on the other hand, who cares principally for the effects that he produces, and not for the strict truth of his conceptions, proceeds in a different way.

CONCRETING THE ABSTRACT.

12. Under a former head, I have supposed the case of fusing the properties of two different objects so as to make a third different from either. Given a brick city and a marble surface, to conceive a marble city. This is to form a new concrete out of two pre-existing concretes. But we may go a step farther. Given the abstract properties to construct the concrete whole. Take, for example, the geometrical form of a pyramid and the colour of granite, and conceive the actual object as existing in nature. This is in most cases a somewhat more difficult operation than the foregoing, but can hardly be said to involve any new or distinct effort. If we realize the constituent elements with sufficient vigour, and keep the two together in the mind, the construction is sure to

follow.

If we have but a feeble hold of one or other of the parts, a certain effort will be requisite to make them fall into their places in the new compound.

When a plan and sections of a building are given, we have the means of realizing the form of the solid building; when we add the colour of the surface or the appearance of the material to the eye, the concrete emerges in all its fulness. In this case the plan and sections would not be enough to give the solid conception, unless we had previously seen solid shapes. We require to fasten upon some remembered building or form of building, and to alter this in the mind till we bring out a correspondence between it and the plan supposed. Thus, in order to realize a gothic church from a builder's designs, the easiest way would be to direct the view upon some church already familiar to us, and on that to make the alteration prescribed by those designs. This is a general maxim in concrete realization, and on it we can easily understand the conditions that render the operation easy. It is evident that a previous store of well-fixed objects of the particular kind in question is the great requisite. If the past experience of the individual has given great opportunities for laying in such a store, and if the mind is naturally of a pictorial and concrete order, the process of new construction has every advantage in its favour. Not to speak of the chance of possessing firm and recoverable ideas of objects approaching very near the new construction, there is a great facility in making the required alterations if the thing operated on is vividly and easily held in the view; provided always that there is no serious obstruction arising from the feelings.

To imagine a country from a map is a case of the same nature. The effort consists in holding before the mind's eye a series of scenic views in all the richness of the colouring and all the fulness of the details, while performing the operation of cutting out and taking in so as to suit the prescribed outlines. An intellect rich in concrete, or living, conceptions of actual nature possesses the prime requisite for such a task.

The mode of describing the objects of natural history is to enumerate the abstract properties. Thus a mineral is de